


infinite wishing

by KeanBlade



Series: color in red [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, M/M, murder!bros, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:22:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19877767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeanBlade/pseuds/KeanBlade
Summary: Madara and Touka's murder road trip





	1. Chapter 1

Touka found him alone on the ground; terribly hurt, his long hair heavy with blood and mud when she lifted it to look at the wound (in the back? in the _back_? How could you fallen so far cousin?). Touka took him and nursed him back to health (only by the grace of the few healing techniques she learned from Tobirama); after all they were the only two people that could ever love Tobirama the way he ought to have been loved, enough to make the world _burn_ for the lack of him. (she found a kindred soul in Madara, for all that is seemed unlikely, someone who also burned too hot and couldn’t live without a cooling presence to be a balm on their soul)

He awakens to pain. (this is nothing new, everything hurts all the time now, he doesn’t recommend love to Uchiha, it is very painful- but he _can’t_ regret it) this pain is new though (it is not the wound that is the worst, it is the horrible knowledge that Hashirama, Hashirama-) and it takes him a minuet before his vison clears and he can see. But he knows the chakra signature of the person with him and it is strangely calming (it shouldn’t be, it wasn’t to many years ago that they were bitter enemies, Tobirama…) so he doesn’t push to hard. He lies (he can not sit with the wound on this back (his _back-_ Hashirama) and looks at her, her strange eyes burning in the flickering light; what now, he asks, I don't know, she said all teeth, but let's go fuck shit up in the meantime. (they burn, but she tempers him somewhat- you cannot destroy what he created- but all the same there is too much pain in them to ever let it go, and there is no reason not to search the world)

It starts here- did you know there is man in the land of rain that nearly killed him? When he was far to young. Madara bared his teeth, why are we still here?


	2. and we dream

Madara dreams of different worlds. He tips his head back and laughs to a purple sky and loves so much it hurts, Tobirama a warm line against his side. Then he woke and bit back a howl (he couldn't forget any part of him, not when every memory of him was burned in his mind with the sharingan on the battlefield- he had been so beautiful- and eventually as he read everything he had on Tobirama like that, just to keep him close when the paper fell to pieces) he dreams and it is a pain he would not give up for any anything (he has already payed the price of it). She understands, Touka with her dead brother, she look at him and knows. Sometimes she tells him stories of his youth and he tells her of all he knows from the fragments he left on paper, she shows him how Tobirama helped her pin up her hair until she could do it on her own. (he is astonished to have his hair so tamed, in the heat of the desert it is a blessing. He teaches her how to tear a man’s heart out still beating, it is considered a fair trade on all sides)

They destroy every person that so much as laid a hand on Tobirama; during the days they fight their way across every country to wreak their vengeance and the night he _dreams_ (sometimes he could almost feel fingers combing through his hair even after he awoke) it is a kind of peace. Not the one he thought he fought for but something (he tries not to think on the village too much, the memory hurts, he doesn’t understand why Hashirama refused to so much as think of his brother) and they make do. The affection between them will always be based in a man long gone, they are too alike to care for each other over much otherwise, but it is better than Madara would have expected when he walked away from everything he thought he would ever want. (Madara never expected to find love, not as the clan head and not given his focus on the future of his clan, he thought his dreams would always be for others)

Always he thinks of what could have been; theirs would never have been an easy relationship, but Madara has never particularly liked easy, and he knows there would have been _passion_ between them.


	3. and we wish

Touka is too grounded in this world to dream much. She remembers old days as she sleeps but they are the memories of days passed, not dreams of a could have been future (present), and for all she wishes things could have been different she takes the world as it is, she always has. So as Madara slips farther into love with a ghost she does her best to give him all she can of Tobirama (as she helps him with his hair she thinks of Tobirama- she tells him the story of the day she found her blood-brother day dreaming of wild black hair- turns out Madara can blush every bit as brightly as an albino) it is a task born half from pity and half from hate. It is perhaps cruel to tell him more of something he will never have, but it is Madara’s brother that killed him, and she can care for the Uchiha when he tells her all he knows of Tobirama, parts of his secret heart even she didn’t know. She can care for him when she thinks of what her brother would want, what was in his most secret heart. (it was Madara who had been there- Tobirama adored his overwhelming warmth, he ached to have a place in that consuming love)

So as they slaughter their way though the days she finds another- well not quite brother, but family (she is older than him, barely but still, so she gains another younger sibling) after a fashion and she can almost be satisfied with that; she has only ever wanted satisfaction really, happiness if for other people, she does not want any piece of it. She cares for him in Tobirama’s place, loves him for love of her brother, watches over him when no other person will; and it is this that seals her fate. She dies on river bank in a valley she doesn’t know that name of, she dies with a blade in her heart and a curse on her lips as she faces an abomination she cannot fathom the origin of. And she regrets that she leaves him alone with memories, but she does not regret her death as she laughs to see blood (that makes even her unnatural foe falter). The god of death is an old friend and there is nothing for her to fear there, all that she loves is waiting for her (all but one, and she fears for him a little without her to remind him of the good days)

Touka wonders what her legacy is, she thinks even if it is just the death they carved in the world she is proud it, after all many who would have someday been enemies of the peace are now no threat to any but worms.


	4. for an answer

The whispers in the corners of his mind persist (what if another brother-) but he ignores them, Touka is right, the village is what Tobirama wanted and he will not endanger that (not even if he wants to burn them all down, they never _deserved_ -) not when there are other targets for his anger, better ones. This man almost killed him, this woman sought to break him for information, this person left him in the sun for days with no thought for his china pale skin (and, _albino_ ; that man dies _slowly-_ Madara knows more of burns than almost any other man alive), together they wipe clean the slate of his pain. Its not enough, never enough, but its better than he though he would find; there is an understanding between them that he has never known before and more laughter (cruel or not) than he has ever known before. (perhaps he grows complacent, perhaps they both do, for when she _dies_ , well,)

So he takes her home to be buried with her brother, he owes her that if he owes her anything, he carries her cooling body back to the place they both turned their backs on and looks down on his dream so many years too late. He slips through the streets to that first grave, he buries her beneath a simple stone (blood sister, always) but when he see it- (another stone besides that first- Hashirama, founder, father, brother, we owe him so much) he cannot stop his anger, searing though him like fire in dry land; he dares to sleep next to the man that he deprived of all memory, he dares to think himself worthy- (Madara can hardly _breath_ ). And the village itself- it is not what he planned for (in the meticulous notes so lovingly crafted) there is so much wrong with it, the clans each live apart from each other, the children train separately (the _academy_ , his great love, rife with inequality, clan children know so much more than the others and teachers that do not look to teach all equally)

This is not what he died for. This is not what he thought he left behind, this is not what he wanted, they _do not deserve him._


	5. to a burning world

And he will _make_ them pay. Touka gave him a gift once, she found it in the days before she found him, it will not take long to go collect it; it is a great gift that was hard won (she carried a token from that battle ever after, gold horns would look lovely on her mantel) and will be the weapon of both of their revenge (he can’t _think_ over the whispers in his head, he can’t think of his clan, of the brother he does still care for, of the brother he loves). He turns away again from the nightmare of his dream where his people still love him (the Uchiha hold love above all things, they couldn’t blame Madara for leaving for his beloved), there are still people that care for him but the static in his head (so much worse now that it was before Touka’s death) drowns out all but the need for his bloody justice; madness dogs him every step of the way and all that he learned to be in the time he spent with Touka fades. (he can’t feel fingers in his hair anymore, he can hardly bring himself to touch it)

The day he wakes and realizes that he dreamt of blood (of the way Tobirama’s eyes looked when they met his across a battlefield, how he looked with blood on his lips, the faint smile he gifted Madara with) and pain, and over, and over, he dreams of _Hashirama never turning around._ He dreams of days making something strong and of Hashirama turning down the plan writ out by a smooth hand, refusing to give the Uchiha a place of importance in the village (and he would be mad that Tobirama guessed he wouldn’t be hokage if it weren’t balanced by the attempt to make sure his clan had some say in the affairs of their home) and refusing to name the academy for the man who loved it- refusing to even acknowledge that he had a brother (maybe once he could have believed that was grief, but now? Hah). The day he realizes that he will not dream of a purple sky and love made flesh ever again is the day he is truly lost (almost he hears a voice speak to him from far away, but he cannot see though the tears to know if there is anyone there)

Madara makes Konohagakure _burn_. He hardly cares who stands before him, he cannot see his brother’s face; but there is a flash of silver in Mito’s hand (happuri?) and he hesitates- that is all she needs.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you sharked and kitsunesongs for expanding this with me.


End file.
